TWO POEMS OF A POETESS

1.Because I Could Not Stop For Death-Emily Dickinson

Introduction to the poetess:

Emily Dickinson(1830-1886) is an American poetess who was as enigmatic(impossible to understand or explain) in her behavior as her poems are.Her poems are about common topics like death,life,pain,loneliness,madness,and so on;but her themes or ideas are not common to other common people’s perception or perspective.Her poems are seemingly simple but actually too original in ideas to be easily understood.Dickinson stopped going out of her home from her late twenties and remained a mysterious figure almost never seeing people until her death at the age of 56!She had written about 1700 poems in home-made small note-books and hidden under her pillow;except the seven poems published during her life,her sister found the other poems after she died!She wrote mostly in quatrains with short lines and many dashes(hesitation marks) that make her poetry a unique form.The present poem is about immortality and eternity.The poetess feels that this mortal life is too long a wait before her marriage with death;she wants to begin her real and permanent life after dying,with death!

Introduction to the poem:

                   The speaker of the poem is a girl whose marriage proposal has been confirmed.Her fiancé is death.She and her fiancé are going out for a ride in a cart pulled by a horse.First,She describes the scenery on the journey and then expresses her idea that she has not yet started her real,married life,the life of eternity.The idea is that this life is only a wait before an everlasting life begins:according to Christianity,good people will live forever in heaven after dying from this life.But,since Dickinson says that she is in love with death,the idea is rather complicated.In simple words,we may say that this poem is a poem of ‘suicidal feelings’.

Explanation of the poem:

Stanza 1:If we read the first two lines of the poem as making one sentence,the poetess says that because she could not wait for death,death kindly stopped for her.This means that we cannot decide to die,and it is death who decides to wait for us or comes and takes us.But,if we read the first stanza and pause with the dash(-) we feel that the first and second lines don’t make a single sentence.If we read  first line separately,it means that the poetess says that she could not wait for death,and then she hesitates;after a moment of thought,she adds that death kindly waited for her.The dashes and punctuation marks that usually mark hesitation or nervousness.In this poem too,the dashes should be taken as marking a pause and hesitation.We can fill our meanings in those gaps,and we can also analyze why the speaker pauses in places marked by the dashes.In the third and fourth lines,the poetess says that the cart was carryin her and her friend(her fiance) and also immortality.*In the first two lines of the poem,we become aware that the poetess is not saying something ordinary,because the expression is not ordinary.We would say,”Because I do not have the power to lengthen or end my life,I believe in fate.”That is not what the poetess is saying;what she means is also much more complex.The third and fourth lines also suggest that the carriage is a metaphorical carriage,because it is not only carrying real human beings,but also an abstract passenger:immortality.Thus the ‘journey’ referred to in the beginning of the poem is not a literal journey but rather a symbolic one,the journey of the consciousness or the journey of the soul.In the stanzas 2 to 5,the poetess will describe this metaphoric journey and in the last stanza,she will tell what she finally realized about this life and about eternity.

Stanza 2:This stanza adds some information about the journey but it doesn’t forward it.The poetess says that she and her friend went ahead slowly and her friend Death was not in hurry.This means that she felt that her life was rather long.She says that she had put aside the concerns of everyday life,and she had stopped enjoying her leisure,for the sake of her fiancé.This means that the poetess had stopped taking any interest in her mortal life in this world,because she was concentrating on dying and beginning the life of eternity.This kind of interpretation of the poem can also be related to the personal life of the poetess.Dickinson was a woman who did not take much interest in her social life.She never came out or kept in touch with people;she was the daughter of a famous man and her family had a big circle of relatives and acquaintances.But she was so introverted that she seemed to be in love with death and the next life.Whether this was true of poetess herself or not,this is true to the speaker of this poem.

Stanza 3:In the third stanza,the speaker describes the things on the way.She and her friend passed across a school where children were playing the ring in their afternoon break(recess).Going ahead,they crossed the fields where the crops were ripe and looked like gazing at them.Then they passed the setting sun.The things on the way are symbolic.The school with children at play symbolizes childhood.It means that the speaker,and the death crossed childhood.Then she came to the fields,which represent adult life and labour.The setting sun also stands for old age that follows.In this allegorical journey,the living speaker is accompanied by death!Dickinson’s idea must be that we are born not only with the potentials for life but also with the prospect of death.We live with that inevitability within us and then we die.Dickinson  feels that this life is a short wait before uniting with death.But this death is also the other form of life after death,because,according to the poem’s logic,the speaker will be livin with it after her marriage,or the moment of dying.

Stanza 4:The speaker modifies the statement of the previous stanza:”Or rather-He(sun) passed us-“She says that the sun passed them on their journey.Then the night dews came along.They were shivering cold and chilly.The speaker felt it very cold mainly because she did not have ood and thick clothes.She says that she had only a gossamer gown,and gossamer is a thin silken kind of cloth.She also had a tippet but that too was made of another kind of thin cloth called tulle.These details in the stanza add imagery to the poem,but they do not seem to be symbolic.However,they tell us important clues about the fact that the speaker is treating death as her fiancé .The mention of the clothes like gossamer gown and tulle tippet suggest that she is engaged for marriage,because they are special clothes used in marriage.Like a maiden,she doesn’t say it openly,but we know that she is on an outing with no one other than her own would-be husband.

Stanza 5:This stanza is a twist in the poem.After passing the setting sun and after the coming of the night dews,it is probably growing dark.Now,they come to a grave.The poetess again uses roundabout expression:she calls it a “swelling of the ground”.The ‘roof’ of that ‘house’ inside the ground not properly visible,and the cornice(decorated pillar) was also inside the ground.This is the end of the allegorical journey of mortal life.This encounter of the symbol of death makes the speaker realizes that this life is temporary.

Stanza 6:In the last stanza,the speaker says that she realized the reality about this life when she came to the grave.She says that it has been centuries since that day when she saw the grave.But she feels that it has been shorter than a single day on which she realized that time is turned toward eternity.As in the beginning of the poem,she says something in an opposite manner:it has been centuries since that day,but she feels it like a day.This should be taken as meaning the opposite:it has been only a short time,but she feels it too long,because she is not interested in this life.The horses here symbolize time.The poetess means that time is not limited to this life.She has now realized that the horse drawing the cart of her life(and her fiancé) will continue to move on into eternity.

                         Theme of the poem :

The poem “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” deals with the poetess’s desire to leave her physical life in this world and begin the eternal spiritual life of the soul.For this,the speaker of the poem has assumed Death as her fiancé.She has been engaged to death,and she is impatiently waiting for uniting with him,so as to begin her endless life.

                    To develop the unique theme of the desire for life after death,the speaker has first narrates a short journey by giving us hints that it was a life-journey.She is riding with death:it means that she was born and will live this life along with the prospect of death.Dickinson therefore makes the speaker fall in love and decide to marry with death;the speaker is waiting for the marriage.Symbolically,the poem makes life a kind of short wait before beinning the actual ‘life’ after death.The activities of this life are therefore like the short walks or rides that we take while waiting.Dickinson’s persona realizes during one such short ride that this life is just a wait,and that time is directed towards eternity.

In modern terms,the theme of this poem is one of ‘suicidal thoughts’,but it should also be taken as an expression of the spirituality by a nineteenth century woman.Besides,the theme of the poem can also be regarded as an explanation of the nature of the poetess herself:the poem is also autobiographical.

2.DADDY-SYLVIA PLATH

Introduction to the poetess:

   Sylvia Plath(1932-1963) is an American poet,whose work is known for its savage imagery and themes of self-destruction,and for the violent protest of a feminist persona generalizing males as the agents of all sorts of oppression upon women and humanity.Born in Boston as a daughter of a Prussian father and Austrian mother,Plath was married to the English poet Ted Hughes in 1956 and lived in England until she divorced with him in 1962.Her father had died when she was only eight,and she remembered him throughout her life as a dominating man who left her a destitute,poor and exposed to intense suffering and trauma.Her rebellious outcry against a father image comes partly from this.In 1953,she suffered the first bout of depression due to overwork,attempted suicide,and was hospitalized for six months.In 1958,she attended Robert Lowell’s poetry writing seminar and met the profoundly confessional poets of the time;so her later poetry is confessional to some extent.On her third attempt at  suicide,Plath successfully took her life at the age of 29,in 1963.Many believe that she commited suicide because she failed to define and defend herself against the destructive effects of the male-made traditions,society,poetry,and even language!Most of her poems are charged with anger against the male and male world and traditions.Plath sets her poems against the backdrop of classical myth,nature and history,turning people and family members into archetypes.” Lowell Commented,”In her poems,Sylvia Plath becomes…..one of those super-real,hypnotic,great classical heroine”.Plath is also usually an impressionist and surrealist poet.The present poem first symbolizes the speaker’s father as the oppressive male,and then it further develops the significance of the ‘daddy’ image into generalized universal destructive forces including war and tyranny,the German Nazis and their Hitler,science and its destructive uses,anarchy and so on.

Introduction to the poem:

The poem “Daddy” is a feminist poem.The poem is also partly autobiographical,because the poet herself has said that the ‘daddy’ of the poem is her own daddy.But,we should not take it only in that rather narrow sense,because we can clearly see that the poem is more psychologically significant than it is autobiographical.Psychologically,the poem is an outlet of the mad anger of the speaker.On the surface of the poem,we see that the speaker hurls a series of verbal assaults against her father.She goes to the extent of scolding her father as a ‘bastard’.But on a deeper level of meaning,the image of ‘daddy’ is the symbolic male who has oppressed the female throughout history;more generally,it is also the symbol of all destructive and tyrannical forces maintained by the males-war,genocide,atrocity,and so on.

Explanation of the poem:         

Stanza 1:The speaker of the poem begins with an angry attack.She begins with a kind of conclusion that the ‘you’ does not do anything anymore.She calls him a ‘black shoe’.She says that she has lived in that black shoe(like a foot) for thirty years.The ‘black shoe’ or jungle boot was a symbol of the German Nazi soldiers who were(and still are) extremely hated by all the Europeans and Americans.But the speaker is not using only the traditional symbols;she is also using the symbols in the ‘private’ sense.For instance,to live in a shoe must mean ‘living in a deplorable condition’.The speaker adds to the imagery when she says that she has been living in that condition for thirty years being poor and ‘white’;and she is also not able to breathe properly and express her pain “barely breathing or Achoo”.’Achoo’ is a foreign word,probably German,for ‘ouch’.

Stanza 2:The speaker now directly addresses her daddy and tells him that she has been compelled to kill him.Though he died before she had the time to kill him,she always wanted to kill him.She calls him a heavy man,”a bag full of God”,a horrible(ghastly) statue with one grey toe as big as a San Francisco seal(large sea animal).The images in this stanza give several kinds of shapes and qualities to the picture of the speaker’s father.To be heavy must be suggestive of being imposing and fearful.The description “a bag full of God” is one of the not very meaningful and rather surrealistic images in this poem.It seems to suggest that her father was not a true Christian,because that is an imagery of idolatry.But the image of his foot as big as a seal in San Francisco is too exaggerated and simply surrealistically associative.

Stanza 3:This stanza is a continuation of the image making of the previous stanza.The speaker says that her father is also like a gigantic statue that has a head in the freakish Atlantic.She adds that its head is pouring green bean over the blue ocean.It is dirtying the waters of the beautiful beach of Nauset.She used to pray to get him back from his grave;as we see later,she always wanted to get him back and kill him again!”Ach,du” is another expression of pain.Such words and all other words that end with the ‘oo’ sound emphasize the tone and sense of shouting in anger.The frequently repeated word ‘you’ also adds to this effect,besides suggesting the sense of disrespect and accusation when she uses it with an effect of pointing a finger at him.

Stanza 4:Now the speaker begins to raise the issue of the genocide(mass killing) by the German Nazis.She expresses her hatred against the Germans,and identifies her father with them.She sees her father’s image in the Nazi soldiers,the Germans and their Hitler.In the German language,she can hear her father.She can see him in the Polish towns where the Nazis ran the roller machines over men on the streets!The rollers of war(symbolically) bring his image in her mind.But it is not only the wars in Poland;there are so many other towns that she knows of.

Stanza 5:Continuing with the previous stanza,she tells us that her Polish friend says that there are dozens of towns where the Nazis are murdering people.So the speaker could not say where exactly her father puts his foot,or his root.This means that he is everywhere;he is the symbol of atrocity and genocidal tyranny.She can never talk to such a man.It is as if her tongue is stuck in her jaw.

Stanza 6:She adds that her tongue has stuck in a barbed wire snare.The fence with thorny wire is the signal of the army.The sounds “ich,ich,ich,ich” is an expression of not being able to speak,because her tongue is hooked by the army wires.Then she says that she thought every German was he.She also thought that his language was the vulgar language of the soldiers.

Stanza 7:The next is an image of an engine,a roller,which the German army used to roll over the people in Polish towns in 1941.She adds that she feels that she herself is being crushed by the engine.She says that she is like one of the Jews who were crushed or tortured to death,in one of the concentration camps of Hitler:Dachau,Auschwitz and Belsen are the places where Hitler gathered and killed thousands of innocent Jews.The speaker says that when she remembers this,she begins to talk like a Jew.She even thinks that she is a bit of a jew.The images of this stanza remind the readers of such a thing in history which makes them almost as mad as the speaker herself:we can’t help going mad at a detestable monster in the guise of human being,the most hateful man named Hitler,whom all human beings will ever curse, and condemn,forever.

Stanza 8:The speaker changes subject and says that the blood and oppression has made the world impure.The snows of tyrol in Italy and beer of Vienna in  Austria are no longer pure or true.We know that Plath’s mother was a descendant of Jewish ancestors and her father was a German.Here,Plath implies that she is a mixed blood.We also know that Jews themselves are said to be mixed blood(and in Hitler’s,and many Europeans’ view,impure).Hitler and his German people hated and killed millions of Jews in unforgettably and unforgivably horrible ways for the simple reason that they are mixed blood:Hitler said that Jews will destroy the pure blood because they are dangerous and evil.In this poem Plath is suggesting that, that logic is foolish because there is nothing unmixed in the world.Even if she or all the Jews are mixed,that doesn’t affect or prove anything.Plath has got a pack(72 cards) of Tarot cards which are used by the Jews for fortune-telling:she declares that she is Jew,and suggests that there is nothing wrong with being born to this or that race.She says that her grandmother was a homeless wanderer(gypsy) and indeed there is nothing wrong with being the descendant of any race.

Stanza 9:She remembers her father and says to him that she has always been afraid of him.She has always been afraid of the German airlines(Lufthansa/Lufthwaffe).She has also been afraid of the ununderstandable language(gobbledygook).She has been afraid of his moustache,and his bright-blue Aryan eye.He is a German soldier who drives the rollers(panzer-man).

Stanza 10:He is not a God but a swastika;she calls him terribly black and huge swastika that covers the sky itself.The swastika is the symbol of ‘goodwill’ used since ancient times in Hindu communities,but Hitler took it to symbolize his ideals and rule and so it is taken as a sign of the devil here in this poem.Changing issue in mid-stanza,the speaker says that women love the Fascists(of Italy) who believed in absolute rule.This is obviously an irony because women in particular hate oppression and tyranny.Then she adds an of boot in the face,certainly an image of the Fascist way of dominating men.They are brutes,with a brutish heart,and a savage nature.This stanza contains,like many others,such a language which suggests that the speaker is so disturbed mentally that she cannot follow a simple line of thought.The change of subject in mid-stanza,the absurd images,the unrelated ideas and the exaggerated and twisted expressions all suggest that her anger is so much that she is not able to properly organize and logically express them.

Stanza 11:In this stanza,the speaker brings up a simple image of her own father when she was a child.She suggests that she remembers the exact image of her father as he stood before the blackboard.This seems to be her mental picture of his harshness as he tried to teach her.She remembers the cleft(parted) chin instead of having a cleft foot.The demons are believed to have cleft feet,like those of pigs or oxen.This means that her father did not have signals of being a demon outwardly,but she used to think that he ought to.And though he doesn’t have cleft feet,he is not less a devil for that.

Stanza 12:He is no less a devil for that,because he has bitten her pretty red heart into two pieces.She says that she was ten when they buried him.This is one autobiographical clue in the poem,because Plath’s father had died when she was about ten.At the age of twenty,she says,she tried to die.But she says she got back to kill him.In fact her relatives had prevented Plath from her attempts at suicide for two times,and she had succeeded on her third attempt.Here she says that she came back to kill him;even his bones would do.She would take revenge by destroying them,imagining to have killed him.

Stanza 13-14:She says that they pulled her out of her suicidal attempts.They stuck her back to life.But then she knew how to utilize the life forced upon her:she made a black effigy of her father and destroyed it.She made it look like Hitler.She did so with the help of a screw and a rack.And she told herself that she was done with it.She concludes,”So,daddy,I’m finally through”.This means that she is finally satisfied after killing his effigy.She has switched the black telephone,probably to prevent his voice from coming to her.

Stanza 15-16:She says that she has killed two men,her daddy and his ghost which drank her blood for seven years.She tells that to her daddy and adds that he can now go and rest forever.In the last stanza,she concludes that there is a big stick in his black fat heart.She reminds him that the villagers never liked him.And now after his death,they are dancing and stamping upon his grave.She says that they always knew that it was he who was the rogue,the tyrant,and so on.The speaker uses the most angry word ‘bastard’ in the last line.And now that she has expressed her anger to the fullest,she seems to be relieved.She says that she is satisfied.

Themes of the poem:

                        The poem”Daddy” is typically a protest poem whose themes are multiple.On its surface,it is the outpour of a daughter’s anger against her dominating father,but the poem’s deeper meanings should be more generalized and symbolically interpreted as themes of ‘feminist protest’ against male domination,’political protest’ against the Germans and their Hitler,’humanist  protest’ against the inhumanity of war and politics,and the theme of ‘psychological outlet’ for relieving a torrent of neurotic energy caused by personal as well as social reasons in the speaker’s mind.Besides exploring these themes,it is also possible to interpret the poem as an autobiographical poem of Sylvia Plath’s personal life and experiences

              On a simple and superficial level,the theme of the poem is the outrageous expression of anger by a daughter against her father.This ‘concrete’ level of the poem’s meaning should not be underestimated because all the other deeper meanings depend on our understanding of the basic situation and expression.The speaker’s father has died,but he has always haunted with the dominating effect,and so she has had to struggle against it and even imagine killing his ghost.She is so angry with him that she identifies him with the Germans,the demoniac Hitler,the Nazi soldier,wars,engines used to crush men on the road,statues,and many other images.All those images suggest force,brutality,inhumanity,heartlessness and so on:Daddy becomes a private symbol of the dominating male and male traditions,war and politics,and a mind-disturbing demoniac image of inhumanity and violence.

                   One strong dimension of the poem’s deeper theme is the feminist protest.The father of the speaker gradually loses his individual qualities and becomes just a macho who is extremely cruel and dominating,harsh and hard like lifeless statue,comparable to animalistic images,and tyrannical like the Nazis and their devilish Hitler.The father or male figure here takes on the general symbolic meaning as ‘power’,’cruelty’ and ‘oppression’,and therefore it need not be taken as ‘male’ alone.In fact,the extremity of anger against males in general is so unreasonable and unjustifiable that the poem’s meanings are only psychologically accountable.

                As Plath herself emphasized,the male need not be male alone but any kind of oppressive force against ‘humanity’.In that sense,the poem’s theme includes the concern for humanity.It is a humanistic protest against the systems and agents of cruelty and inhumanity.That means,the image of the father develops thematically into a symbol of inhuman forces.

                   And finally,all the discussions of ‘theme’ in the poem should be considered in terms of psychological causes.Whether it is about feminist protest,humanist protest,or a partly autobiographical protest of a poetess,it is the outpour of a neurotic kind of emotion.The anger of the speaker is not limited to rational or reasonable manner of protest.We cannot ‘excuse’ a poet for being so indecent as to make the speaker call her father a ‘bastard’,if we do not consider that the anger is the cause of a psychological strain on the speaker,as it was also on the poetess herself.       

ROMANTIC POEMS

1.THE GARDEN-ANDREW MARVELL(1621-1678)

Introduction to the poet:

                       Andrew Marvell was a British politician who also belongs to the metaphysical school of poets;but he was not known,like Donne,as a poet during his lifetime.Marvell also belongs to a later age when classical type of poetry had begun to be written,but he wrote romantic poems of personal experience and feelings.He was well read in the classical languages and literature(of Latin and Greek).Marvell was a strange type of man and poet who was not regarded as a major poet until the twentieth century.He was a politician but he wrote poetry supporting pastoral life,loneliness and spirituality; he was a strictly religious person but he wrote love poems like “To His Coy Mistress”;he mixed up the unconventional metaphysical poetry with classical conventions;and he is also at the same time one of the earliest ‘romantic’ poets in one sense.He wrote the poem “The Garden” while he was staying in a senior politician’s residence that had a beautiful garden.The poem is partly metaphysical,partly classical and partly romantic.

Introduction to the poem:

                    “The Garden” is a unique poem which is romantic in its subject and expression,metaphysical in its ideas and word-game,and classical in its form and music.It is romantic because it is about the nature in subject and theme,and it is the expression of the poet’s personal and emotional feelings about life in the nature(and society).Its style is metaphysical because it uses the conceit,forceful argument,allusions(references)from sources like the Bible,myths and metaphysical philosophies.And it is a classical poem in its form because the stanzas,rhythm,rhyme and word-choice is like in classical poetry(carefully perfected form,and a language different from the ordinary).The theme is that the garden(which is the symbol of life-in-nature) is the perfect place for physical,mental and spiritual comfort and satisfaction,unlike the society where pleasure is false and temporary.The poet has finally found the nature and realized its value;he claims that the nature is the only true place for complete luxury.

Explanation of the poem:

Stanza 1:(Gist:Men are foolish to enjoy social ambitions instead of living in the nature’s luxury).People,in social life,are foolishly happy when they get the garland made of a few leaves of palm tree(for successful soldiers),oak tree(for aged politicians) or the bay tree(for great poets).And they think(see) that their endless(incessant) labours are rewarded(crowned) with the leaves of a single tree.But the shadow of trees here in this garden is criticizing(upbraid) the labours(toil) of those men who only get garlands of leaves for their lifelong  hard work(such tradition is common in the western societies).The poet says that in the garden all the flowers and all the trees together make a complete ‘garland’ of relaxation(repose).*Note:The use of classical type of language(wording) and sentence structure,as in the line:”And their incessant labours see/Crowned from some single herb or tree”.In simple,modern English,it means:”And(they) see(that) their incessant/unending labours crowned/rewarded with some single plant/herb or tree”.The omitting of subject ‘they’ and connector ‘that’, and the transfer of verb ‘see’ to the end of the sentence are common in classical poetry which is difficult because of complicated sentence structure as well as ‘special’ poetic words.

Stanza 2:(Gist:At last,I’ve found the peace and innocent way of life in the nature).He personifies quietness/peace and innocence as two beautiful(fair) sisters and talks to them.He says that he has found them in the nature,after having wasted his time in the human society in search of peace and innocent way of life in the busy companies of men.He now feels that their source(plants) is found only in nature,and that the society is too rude(not gentle) in comparision to this sweet loneliness(solitude).

Stanza 3:(Gist:How attractive is nature,and how foolish are those lovers who are mad in love with mere women).The speaker says that he had never seen any fair(white) and young(red) woman as attractive(amorous) as this lovely green nature.He criticizes fond(foolish) lovers whose flame/fire of love is so cruel and thoughtless that they cut the names of their beloveds on the trees.They don’t know and don’t care(heed) how the beauty of these trees is much more than(exceed) the beauty of their beloveds.He speaks to the trees again and tells them that if he injures any tree,he will write their own names(and not any woman’s).

Stanza 4:(Gist:All men,and even Gods turn to the nature when they are tired of love with women).When we ‘social’ men have finished the heat of love(passion),we make the nature the best place to take shelter(in old age).Even the Gods who chased the beautiful girls(mortals),according to Greek myths,used to end their race by changing the girls into trees.For example,God Apollo tried to get a beautiful girl named Daphne and because he could not,he changed her into a laurel tree,so that he could be a permanent lover of the laurel(the laurel is a symbol of poetic creativity and God Apollo is also the God of creativity).Similarly,God Pan also changed Syrinx into the reed.

Stanza 5:(Gist:This life in nature is physically luxurious).This life that I live in the nature is a wonderful thing!Ripe apples fall around my head as I lie on the ground.The juicy(luscious) grapes(clusters of vine) press their wine-like juice in my mouth.The nectarine(a fruit) and the peach come up to my hands.And if I walk,I stumble on(step over) melons,I am entangled by flowers,and I fall on grass.

Stanza 6:(Gist:Moreover,it is mentally satisfying;I enjoy the world of my mind).By the way,it is more from mental pleasure than from physical that I enjoy this life in the nature.My mind goes inward into its own world(of ideas) and I enjoy the worlds created by the mind,which are even more beautiful than the physical world outside.The mind reflects the physical world;poet create their own romantic worlds;and according to Plato’s philosophy,the human mind contains the image or copy of everything in the outside world.In the simple sense,the poet is saying that he is also enjoying the poetic and mental worlds of ideas that he can create by living in the nature.He says that the mind is an ocean where each kind of thing in the outside world finds a similar thing(resemblance) in it.Yet the mind is creative,and it creates other beautiful things and worlds exceeding/transcending the things outside.The worlds of ideas(in poetry) defeat(annihilate) the physical world;so the poet can enjoy not only green forests and gardens,but also ‘green thoughts’ in the ‘green shade’ of the garden.*Note:This twisting and forcing of odd  philosophies is a feature of metaphysical poetry.And the strange and unconventional wording in ‘green thoughts’ and ‘green shade’ is also a common feature of metaphysical poetry.

Stanza 7:(Gist:And it is also a spiritual pleasure that I have in this nature).The speaker says that when he is resting under a fruit tree or near a fountain of water,his soul is leaving the cover(vest) of his body aside and playing(glide) among the branches(boughs) of trees.He feels that his soul is preparing to take the long flight to eternity(that is,to die and go to heaven);he says that his soul is a bird rubbing(whet) its shining and colourful wings.(The image of the soul as a bird is taken from the Bible).

Stanza 8:(Gist:Adam must have been happy like this,before Eve spoilt his paradise).The speaker thinks that this must be the kind of perfect state of Garden of Eden(paradise) in which the first man lived after God left him.According to him,Adam was happy only so long as he was alone(without a mate/friend).He needed no help because the place was so pure and sweet.But it was too much for a simple man(mortal) to get two heavens-one Eden, and the other,loneliness(solitary).That means God created Eve and took back the double paradise.*Note:This is also a typical metaphysical trick of manipulating an idea:The Bible doesn’t say things like this!

Stanza 9:(Gist:So,there can be no question of real pleasure without the nature).How well God,the skillful gardener,made this special world of the nature/garden!In this separate world of the nature,even the sun seems to have its own fragrant(sweet-smelling) course(zodiac).And in this world,the laborious bee calculates(computes) its own time;there is a different sense of timing in the luxurious world of the nature.Therefore,we cannot think(reckon) of truly pleasant time(wholesome hours) without(but with) the herbs and flowers,or the nature.

2.I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD-WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Introduction to the poet:

                           William Wordsworth(1770-1850) is known for his poems related to the nature,childhood,poetic creation and the role of nature in the creation of poetry.Wordsworth started the Romantic Revolution(or Revival) in English poetry(along with his friend Coleridge) with “The Lyrical Ballads” in 1798.He advocated for a new kind of poetry which should be the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings…..recollected in tranquility”,or peaceful mind.It means that poetry must be written spontaneously,not under the restrictions of rules of music(rhythm and rhyme),expression(diction and language) and word game.Romantic poetry is about ‘anything’ that the poet personally felt or experienced deeply.Strong and true emotions are the material of poetry.But,that does not mean that anyone can simply write poetry “in the heat of firsthand emotions or impressions”.It should be “emotions recollected in tranquility”.The present poem is a best example of what that definition and theory of poetry means.

Introduction to the poem:

                        “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is a typical romantic poem in which the poet ‘recollects his powerful feelings of a past experience in a mood of tranquility(peace of mind)’.That day the poet had been roaming on the sea-shore when he suddenly encountered an endless line of yellow daffodil flowers blossoming.In that moment,he was almost thoughtless because of excitement.Now,he is in his home and is writing a poem.According to Wordsworth,poetry is written when the poet’s mind becomes active due to some past memory and the imaginative supports creativity.The first three stanzas narrate the event of the poet’s roaming aimlessly on the sea-shore.In the last stanza,he reveals that he is now sitting alone and writing the poem.The memories of his excitement when he saw the daffodils on the sea-shore excite his mind again.When he remembers it,his imagination becomes active and the memories start changing into poetic expression.The mind becomes so active and the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings that he re-experiences and recollect into poetry in this new mood of tranquility.

Critical Commentary:

                      I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud is a romantic poem that satisfies Wordsworth’s definition of poetry as “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings….(that is) recollected in tranquality”.In the first three stanzas,the speaker narrates and describes his experience of wandering lonely as a cloud among ‘ten thousand’ daffodils along the bay during the day.In the second part or the last stanza.he “recollects” or remembers and re-experiences the emotion as he expresses it in poetic lines.This poem is also typically romantic in its subject matter,language and expression.

                        The speaker is sitting alone in his couch at home and it is probably a favourable evening time.He says that when he lies in “vacant or pensive(thoughtful) mood”,the past experience like that of daffodils “flash upon that inward eye” or the imagination.This is the advantage of solitude(loneliness):he can dance with the daffodils of memory and past experience and express it in meditation of a kind.This is exactly how Wordsworth defines poetry.The poem can therefore be used to explain or illustrate the definition of poetry,especially of Romantic poetry as given by Wordsworth.

                      In the first part,which the speaker narrates as he is meditating in his couch,he tells how he enjoyed wandering,gazing at daffodils and becoming happy and excited in their “jocund company”.But he did not realize what a wealth of experience,emotion,impression and sweet memory they had given to his mind.He had unknowingly gained feelings and emotion for creating poetry,and a lasting experience.He had suddenly encountered a ‘crowd’ or ‘host’ of ‘sprightly’ daffodils,dancing and ‘twinkling’ like stars.He had also seen the shining sea waves dancing similarly;but the daffodils were doing much better in their dance and happiness.A poet,he says,could not help becoming happy in such a company.

                         Now as he sits alone,the memory of the day-time experience brings its real image to his mind.And when this happens,his heart is filled with pleasure.It is as if his heart begins to dance with the daffodils of imagination in his mind’s eye.This is also the poetic moment,the tranquil moment favourable for recollecting and expressing powerful emotions.

                         The poem is,like a typical Romantic poem,about the nature and the speaker also has an emotional attachment and attitude towards it.He regards the nature and its memory highly.This is why critics call Wordsworth “a high priest of nature”.Another important romantic element is the spontaneous expression of personal emotion in simple and ordinary language:this was the revolution brought about by the Romantic Movement.Similarly,the absence of the conventional ‘poetic’ vocabularly,the impulse of freedom and pleasure,and an almost free-verse like rhythm are other features of Romantic poetry.

                      Other features are found in the word-game, too.Daffodils are animated as dancing and further personified as ‘sprightly’ or as being ‘in glee’.There are similes as in the title itself and in ‘stara’ which are compared with the flowers.There are metaphors like ‘inward eye’ and the ‘heart’.In short,this allegory of the process of poetic creation is also interesting at its face value for the realistic details and experience.

Imagery used in the poem:The poem “I Wandered Lonely as a cloud” is based on a visual description of a wild garden of daffodils near a lake.The visual image of the daffodils comes back to the poet’s mind and it arouses a poetic feeling in him.The image of the daffodils symbolizes the mental picture of past experience which is the true source of poetry for Wordsworth.

                   The image of the daffodils and the whole scene is vivid.The poet has visually described himself also a “cloud” that floats above hills.The crowd of daffodil is personified as “dancing” and “in glee”(happy) and “tossing their heads”.The original daffodils were real and concrete flowers.Their image is literal.But the poet has made them perceptual and conceptual.They represented the ‘concept’ of ‘happiness’.And now,as the poet brings the mental picture of the dancing daffodils in his mind,they represent the inspiring influences made by the nature on the poet’s mind.

                  The images in this poem are typical word pictures that create vivid mental pictures in the minds of the reader.They are impressive and memorable.

3.MY LAST DUCHESS-ROBERT BROWNING

Introduction to the poet:

Robert Browning is one of the greatest poets of the Victorian age or nineteenth century(though he was known less as a great poet in his own lifetime,and more as Mrs.Browning’s husband,by many;his wife Elizabeth Barret Browning was much more popular poet,then!).Browning is best known(now) as the writer of unique poems called ‘dramatic monologues’.Dramatic monologues are poems in which a single character talks to someone present before him,and the other character is simply a listener,hence monologue.Most of his dramatic monologues are about the Italian society of the fifteenth and sixteenth century(Renaissance),when the society had a highly developed culture but the upper and ruling class was corrupted,snobbish,egoistic…and even criminal.The ruling class used to claim that it had a great culture,art,literature,behavior,and so on;but the personality and behavior of the individual men was disgusting(very bad).Browning’s dramatic monologues present the characters from the Italian society involved in some kind of one way talk with someone,but the situation and conversation is so carefully designed that it reveals(tells) so many secrets about the real personality of the character,his past actions and present motives(aims).Usually,the so-called heroes of the time(kings,priests,scholars) were very mean villains as seen from their intimate,emotional and confident talk or boasting with someone.In the present poem,there is a duke(smaller than a king) who is talking to a man who has come to propose a daughter of a rich man.The duke is saying that the picture on the wall is of his last duchess(his wife) whom he gave orders to be killed,because he did not like her smiling before other people!But we also see that he is hoping to get dowry from his next wife.We then begin to doubt more and more about whatever he says or boasts about himself.After reading the poem critically we realize that he is a murderer,a hypocrite,a liar,a brag,a philistine,a greedy and mean man who declares to have a name and prestige of nine hundred years but one who has killed one wife for getting dowry from another rich man,a man who has such a negative thinking and evil mind that he thinks that his sixteen-year-old innocent wife gets passionately excited to see the donkey or any man…he is the worst man we see or read about,but in the guise of a great duke!

Introduction to the poem:

                    The duke is getting ready to go downstairs to meet the father of the girl and other men.He is speaking to one of the men who is the agent of the new marriage proposal.While waiting him to get ready,the other man is just looking at paintings on the wall to spend his time.The duke sees this,and he begins to speak to pass time.But he is such a man who cannot help boasting and praising himself.Besides,on this occasion,he is also expressing his philosophy about what a good wife must be like!But he is neither fully conscious nor cares that he is saying that he killed  his wife and also that he is expecting  dowry!The poem is based on a real historical event in Italy.The ruler of the region named Ferrara had married a fourteen year old girl whom he killed after three years and married the daughter of another rich man.Here the poem presents the duke talking to one man who has come to call him for talking about another girl proposed for marriage.

Explanation of the poem:

 Lines 1-5:The word “Ferrara” which looks like the subtitle of the poem is actually the “stage setting” for the dramatic monologue.Ferrara was the capital of one of the famous dukedoms in Renaissance Italy.The word not only denotes the place but also the time of the incident,because ‘Ferrara’ was the name of the city only in those days.As the poem begins we see the duke talking about the picture on the wall,which is the painting of his late wife,painted by the greatest painter of the country.He says that she looks like still alive,without shame or guilt.He adds that he calls that “piece” a wonder.The word ‘piece’ suggests that he regards a wife a commodity counted in pieces;even if he means ‘a piece of art’,he is talking,and boasting,in the words of the artists themselves,as if he were a man with great knowledge and interest in art.He uses the word ‘Fra’(Italian word for ‘brother’) to name the artist Pandolf suggesting that he is familiar and intimate with the great artist.         

Lines 6-15:Then he tells the other man to sit down.He says that people have tried to ask why there is a deep passion and sincere glance on the face of the duchess.They have never understood that emotional kind of face,because he says that he usually keeps the curtain over the painting.According to the duke,the other man is not the first person to wonder about the red spot on the cheek of the duchess’s picture.He even adds that people,and this man,want to ask whether it was the presence of her husband that made her face red,or it was also the presence of other males!But no one had the courage to ask it!This means that he is so great that people don’t have the courage to ask small things.He guesses and claims that they “want to” ask that stupid and evil-minded question about somebody’s wife!Then he tells what that red spot on her face was.Well,red part on the cheek of the duchess’s picture is there because she was shy when the painter was painting it,with her in front.

Lines 15-31:The duke adds that the so-called red spot was the indication of her getting passionately exciting!He calls it a ‘spot of joy’.His evil thinking is that the girl would be ‘aroused’ by the sight of any man.He explains.Perhaps the painter was simply saying that her cloth was covering her hand too much,or that painting must not exactly copy of some of the real details;but she thought that was pleasing talk,and she got excited with the painter!Now the duke goes on to add such other details about the character of his past wife,which are all disgusting and utterly unbelievab easilyle.He says that she had a heart(“how shall I say”) which could be easily pleased or impressed by others,and not only by him!She liked whatever she looked at,”and her looks went everywhere”!Everything was ‘one’ to her.His favour at her chest,or the scene of the setting sun,the broken branch of the cherry,or the white horse she used to ride,were all eually interesting and pleasing to her!She would praise them all.Or at least she would blush at them all.

Lines 31-47:And she thanked men but she thanked in a way which showed him that she regarded his nine-hundred year old name as equal to anybody’s name.His feeling is that she should look only at him,talk only with him,thank only him,be happy only with him and appreciate only him.He then says that he would have not to do this or that,but he didn’t like to bend down before her.He says that he doesn’t have the skill to say such small things,but he adds that even if he had it,he would not stoop before a mere wife.He  also says that she would not follow or understand it easily because she was not able to understand his standard of intelligence.He repeats that she used to smile at everyone.He says that she smiled,no doubt,when he went near her,but she smiled in the same way at anybody.That smiling at  everyone increased,he says,and he “gave commands” to end all the smiles,that is,to murder her!Then all the smiles ended together.He looks at the picture again and says that she is standing there,as if alive.

Lines 47-53:He then tells the other man to stand up.He says that they are going to meet the other men below,or downstairs.Then he tells the agent that the new girl’s father is so rich and generous that he need not mention about dowry:It would not be fit or necessary for him to talk about it!Then he adds that it is actually the beautiful daughter of his master in whom he is interested.He says that she is the real ‘object’(aim) of his interest,but the word ‘object’ again hints at the fact that he regards her an object.By this time it seems that the man is so tired of the disgusting boasting that he tries to go down leaving the duke there.

Lines 53-56:The duke says “no we will go together down”.He stops him to give him another piece of self-appreciation!He tells him to look at one of the statues on the side of the room;that is the statue of himself,made by the famous artist of Innsbruck and in the model of the God of war Neptune training a sea-horse.He adds that, that piece of art is thought a rare one.At every point in this monologue,we see that the duke is exposing his own villainies and vanities,when he is trying to prove himself a great man.

Satire in the poem:

                      Thought the poet never directly mentions any kind of comment on the character of the duke,the poem is basically intended as a satire on the duke and the culture of the upper and ruling class people of Renaissance Italy.He exposes the criminal and corrupted character of the duke not by saying anything himself but by letting him boast too much so that the reality cab be easily inferred from it.

                    The duke tries to prove himself a great man.But he starts claiming his greatness by saying that most people do not dare to talk to him!A great truly man doesn’t ‘inform’ his greatness in just any situation,and especially to someone who is definitely inferior.He boasts about who painted the picture.He explains the picture a if he is in art critic,but we later feel that he is a philistine showing off whatever he knows about painting with someone who is not related to the subject.We begin to doubt him when he starts saying very bad things about of his own,and his dead wife.His logic about her bad character is foolish and completely pretty-minded:no one would doubt when an innocent and girl of fifteen naturally smiles at guests and at beautiful things.If the red spot on her cheek appeared when she saw the donkey,it surely doesn’t mean that it is a signal of excitement!And of course,everyone’s looks go everywhere,when the eyes are open;it is the mind that can be evil.But the duke never talked to his wife about such things,and perhaps never actually confirmed whether his doubts were right.He says that he would not stoop before his wife.The worst thing is that a good man doesn’t talk about the character of his own wife,and never about that of his dead wife,with anyone.Our hatred of the duke crosses all limits when when he says even without hesitating that he “gave commands” to murder her!He killed her because he suspected that she was smiling with anyone because she did not differentiate between a partner,her husband,and any other male.His real character is revealed more and more when he begins to talk about ‘dowry’;he is expecting it and is certain about it.We also see that he is snobbish because he keeps sayin that his actual aim is the new girl herself.And finally,he stops the man for sometime to boast about his own statue.

                    Thus,we find that the poet is satirizing the duke by making him expose his own evil character and history in the process of boasting.He is a murderer of his innocent young wife;he is a snob calling himself a great man;he is philistine showing off his knowledge and interest in art;he is a brag who can’t talk of anything else but himself when he needs to pass time;he is a cynic who doubts his wife’s opening her eyes as looking at other males;he has a crazy idea that his wife must look only at him and always highlight his ‘nine hundred old name’;he thinks that he knows how to speak well,and mentions that by saying the opposite;he has that degraded thinking that to talk about small matters with his own wife would be to stoop.

                   These realities,which we gather after critically reading back the poem,are not only intended to satirize the duke but his culture.It is generally the satire of the high-class culture in which the outer appearance of the community ‘values’ are “great”,but the individual’s real personality is rotten to the core.There is violence and murder in the family,and the so-called ‘great’ people like this duke don’t even mind boasting about murders!The poem attacks that corrupted culture of Renaissance Italy.

Theme of ‘female protest’:          

                     

                         The poem “My Last Duchess” is actually a satire of the male-dominated culture that oppresses women without limits.But at a deeper level it can also be read as a protest of that culture done by the poet in the favour of the woman.He arouses sympathy in the readers towards the dead duchess and everyone who reads the poem feels that strong sense of protest against the injustice against women.

                       

                         In the character of the duke,the poem exposes a culture that dominated and oppressed women.In that sense,the poet is protesting against the injustice and oppression of women in this poem.The poet himself does not speak or even comment;the whole poem is in the voice of the character.Besides,we are supposed not to believe what he says but to critically analyze what he says,to understand what is the reality of the poem’s subtext(hidden story).But,at that deeper or subtextual level,the poem is the satire of male domination of women and a bitter protest and exposure of the tyranny and atrocity.

                      

                         In one sense,the picture on the wall becomes the means of the exposure of the disgustingly unjust treatment of women.The picture makes the duke ‘vomit’ his monstrosity(demonism) with confidence,and in a special sense,it protests against the living murderer.The evil duke is sure that he is right whatever he does,even when he kills someone.There is no law for him,not to talk about humanity.He is even proud of what he has done.And in the process of telling the other person about himself and his past,the poet successfully makes the reader protest against him,though without saying anything himself.

TWO LOVE POEMS

1.THE DEMON LOVER-ANONYMOUS

Introduction to the poem:”The Demon Lover” is a typical ‘ballad’.It is also an example of conventional folk ballad.It is one of the many versions of ballads with this title,subject and theme.This version is in 18 stanzas,but other versions vary from 9 to 32 stanzas.Typically,this ballad tells a tragic story of a woman who is killed by a mysterious lover who returns seven years later,and much after the woman has been married and has had a son to another man.The poem was composed by some unknown bard(poet/singer) in ancient times,and it was recorded in writing about 400 years ago.It is a folk ballad which is based on the superstitious belief about demons among ancient English people.It has most of the features of the folk ballad.It is in the narrative mode of expression,but it has many dramatic elements.In its word-game,irony is the most striking device.It also has the musical elements of ballad rhythm(4+3+4+3 iambs) and a ballad rhyme-scheme of abcb.But unlike in other typical ballads,there are many rhyme-less stanzas in this poem.

What is a ballad?

A ballad is a very ancient form of poetry that narrates tales of heroic deeds,legends and loves.It is a poem that is sung and people may even dance or mimic the action being narrated.It,therefore,embodies a dramatic way of presentation where action unfolds through dialogue and characters are recognized through what they say.Refrain and repetition is a technique of the ballad.

Generally,ballad begin abruptly,use a simple language,tell the story through dialogue and action,use a tragic theme,and also make use of a refrain.The episode is single.Events lead quickly to crisis.Setting is minimized.dramatic element is strong.

Explanation of the poem:

Stanza 1:The poem begins in the form of a dialogue between a woman and a man who were in love seven years before.The man had gone away to earn money,but he had made the woman to promise that she would wait for him till he came back.However,the woman had married with a carpenter because he had not come back for a long time.She was a young girl then,but now she is a mother.The very meeting of the two begins the ‘tension’ in the very beginning of the poem.We understand the background of the past,the situation of the present,and the relationship between the characters by reading the dialogue carefully.The man and woman have just met,and they are speaking.First the woman asks the man;she asks where he had been for more than seven long years.The man replies that he had gone to get a lot of wealth(riches) for her.The question and answer of the woman and man begins to reveal the background information about the past,and it also creates the setting or situation from which the story begins.It makes the setting ‘dramatic’,as it is a feature of ballads.The ballads must draw the reader’s attention from the very beginning and maintain it until the very end when the story suddenly comes to a surprising close.

Stanza 2:In the second stanza,the man continues to speak.He tells the woman that he has now come back by remembering the promises(vows)she had made to wait for him to marry.The woman now replies to him by saying that he must forgive her promises of the past,because she is a married wife now.The dialogue is properly written so that the reader can understand the past background of the characters while the present conversation also logically develops.As the two former lovers talk,we know all the background.The dialogue is also unique for brevity(shortness) and the economy and precision of words.

Stanza 3:The man speaks to the woman now.In a more commanding tone,he tells her that if he had not remembered the promises and maintained them,he would have married a king’s daughter far beyond the sea.He says that he refused the crown of gold fpr the sake of his old love.From this speech of the man,we begin to sense a kind of conflict entering into the story.It creates some tension and uneasiness when the man tries to blackmail the married woman.Our sympathy is obviously for the woman because she is married and there is almost no use of talking about past now.

Stanza 4:The woman resists and argues with him telling him that it is his fault if he did not marry the king’s daughter.She is not very daunted by his blackmailing.She adds that it is now useless to say that because she is already married to a ship’s carpenter.She also says that she already has a son to him.This implies that an established and sincere relation is more important than a lot of riches.But this will turn out ironical later when the woman is tempted by the riches the man claims he has brought for her.

Stanza 5-6:But the woman changes her mind.She  seems to be tempted by the mention of wealth in the beginning by the man.She asks whether there will be any place to keep her,if she agrees to go with him.It is also possible that she asks this question to rhetorically assert that there is no place for her now.But what happens is that the man takes the question by its face value and starts tempting her with a description of wealth and luxury she will have if she went with him.He says that he has kept seven strong(brave) ships at sea.He tells her that they are loaded to the brim(edge) with ‘riches of great store’.This temptation continues to the next stanza.The man says what he will do for her in the future,to show and prove what he can do for her and how much he loves her.He says that he will build her a bridge of steel over the sea to help her cross it.This is the mention of his strength,courage and skill.He next highlights what luxurious life she will have with him,if she decides to go.He says that he has brought a lot of silk to cover her from top to bottom and protect her from the cold.These are the typical exaggerated temptations that the woman ought to understand to be false.

Stanza 7:The poem is in dialogue form from the first to the sixth stanza,but the next stanza are in narrative form.In the first two lines of the seventh stanza,the narrator tells us that the woman took her son into her arms and kissed him.Then the poet again employs two lines f dialogue:the mother gives her blessings to her son and also sends her good wishes to his father,her husband.She says that he doesn’t know of ‘this’ or her decision to elope with the present man who she thinks has a lot of gold for her.

Stanza 8:This is again a narrative stanza in which the narrator jumps forward from the first scene to a new one.He has left a gap between the situation of the previous stanza and that of this stanza.Now the two old lovers have left the place and are going towards the sea.The woman has sent her son home and deciding to leave her husband,has come with the other man.The two people are now walking up some street.The narrator narrates this new incident in just one line and comments on the face of the woman.He says that her face looked very beautiful to look at (behold).The man had cast a magic spell upon her face,which now looked like bright gold.This simile of gold seems to be ironical in the context of the poem,because the woman is tempted and ruined by gold.

Stanza 9:Like in the previous stanza,the narrator again jumps much ahead and tells us that the two people were walking along the sea-side.He says that the strong ships were ready to welcome the lady in.The chair of gold was really ready for her to be seated on it.That also seems to be really ironical.As we see only a little while later,the chair will be the seat of her death.

Stanza 10:This is another cinematic type of stanza that narrates another flash of scene as the characters have sailed quite a distance in the sea.They had sailed almost three leagues when the sea began to become stormy.The word ‘league’ means a unit of measuring distance which is about four kilometers.When they had travelled almost three leagues,the sea grew raging and the face of the man also suddenly changed.In this stanza,the poet has used the typical incremental repetition that is a feature of a ballad.The second line repeats the words of the first line,with new words added to them.

Stanza 11:This stanza tells us of the first tragic incident in the poem.The woman is about to lie down to rest.They have come still farther away and the man seems to be silent and unkind.Suddenly,the woman sees(spies) the feet of the man;she sees that his feet are cleft(split in two) instead of having the normal five toes.The cleft or cloven foot is a signal of the demons.The woman now realizes that he is a demon.She is now psychologically tortured.She bitterly weeps.

Stanza 12-13:Seeing the woman weep(cry) bitterly,the man asks her why she is weeping.He asks in a roundabout way that is also insulting and hurting.He asks her if she is crying for the love of gold,or if she is weeping because of fear,or if she is weeping for her husband whom she left knowingly.The  mention of gold is again ironic,though it arouses more pity than critical attitude in the reader towards the woman now.In the next stanza,the woman replies the man.Repeating his words,she says that it is not for gold or fear but for the man she left behind that she is weeping.The second of this pair of stanzas is also another example of the incremental repetition characteristic in ballads.But it emphasizes,the man’s torture of the woman by reminding her innocent husband;and it also emphasizes the woman’s sense of guilt for that.

Stanza 14-15:Now the woman herself asks a question.She sees a bright hill on the horizon and asks what hill that is.She asks this question perhaps because she is terrified and she wants to keep speaking.The man is a demon and is perhaps creating strange things to surprise and terrify her.When she asks what hill that is,he tells her that it is the hill of heaven.But he quickly adds that it is where she would never be.He is saying that he will take her to hell.This is the extreme psychological torture that he has begun to give the woman.The demon lover again uses the same strategy of psychological torture upon the woman.The woman sees a dark hill on the horizon and asks what hill that dark hill is.Perhaps the same bright hill changes into a dark one.He replies that it is the hill of hell where he and she would be.This is even more terrible than the previous one.

Stanza 16-17:In this pair of stanzas,the demon lover uses the terrifying questions to torture the woman even more.He asks whether she would like to see the fishes swimming in the bottom of the sea or to see the green leaves of plants on the banks of Italy on the other side of the sea.The woman helplessly replies that she would like to see the green leaves on the banks of Italy.It seems that she still has some hope of life and mercy from the demon.This stanza also involves the incremental repetition of a ballad.

Stanza 18:In the last stanza,the narrator makes a quick,sudden and surprising turning.The story ends with just a few words of the last two lines of the quatrain.First he tells us that the demon took the woman up to the top of the mast(wooden pole to hold the sail-cloth) to make her see around.But in the last two lines,with just fifteen shorts words,he says that “he sunk the ship in a flash of fire to the bottom of the sea”.Thus the narrative of the ballad ends in a tragic event.The poet does not state any moral or theme;The poem is like a typical folktale that is interesting and meaningful in itself.The meaning is self revealing.The poem perhaps means to suggest the danger of temptation and the punishment of insincerity.But to the people of the olden times who composed and sang this ballad,the story must also have sounded this dream-like tale very real.

2.I KNEW A WOMAN-THEODORE ROETHKE(1908-1963)

Introduction to the poet:Theodore Roethke is a unique twentieth century Romantic poet of America who was influenced by the nature,especially the greenhouses his father owned in Michigan when he was a child.As a boy,he read the great American transcendental Romantic poet and thinker R W Emerson.Known as a great teacher of poetry and of aspiring young poets,he became poet-in-residence at the University of Washington.Roethke imitated the rhythms of the nature and paralleled them with the rhythms of human life.He emphasized that “we think by feeling”,and even doubted,”what is there to know?”He is also known for some of the finest love poems of the twentieth century.Suffering from alcoholism and depression,he often wrote of his passion for the nature and his youth:the present poem must be taken one of those poems,in which he personifies the nature and even projects his desires into it as a young woman who used to satisfy all his desires and teach pleasures of life.But the poem is basically a metaphysical love poem.

Introduction to the poem:On a simple level,the poem describes a woman whom the speaker knew.In fact,he not only knew her but also enjoyed life with her and learnt to enjoy life from her.The speaker is most probably an old man who has lost the country of the young and beautiful woman.He now remembers her and all his days and his pleasures with her.He has a great sense of appreciation and love for her.In fact,he is crazy for her.Perhaps because he has lost her,he is even more passionate.His description shows that she was very beautiful,sexually attractive and playful,and young and active.He describes how she moved and how she turned.His description is also full of the ‘metaphysical’ kinds of  metaphors which exaggerate his love of her.But the poor old man seems to have lost her.But though she is not with her,he is determined to ignore the cares of life and enjoy in the behavior of the woman.He says that he will live to learn the ‘wanton’ ways of the woman.On a symbolic level,the poem can also be said that the poem is also about the poet’s metaphysical love for the nature which he personifies as a woman.It is common for metaphysical poets to project their sexual desires in the nature,like for Andrew Marvell in his poem “The Garden”.In either the ordinary or the metaphysically metaphorical sense,the poem is a powerful love poem.It is even a little vulgar in the use of sexual references and connotations.

Explanation of the poem:

Stanza 1:The speaker begins by saying that he ‘knew’ a woman who was lovely in her bones.This probably means that she was beautiful in her shape,or beautiful ‘to the core’(inside).The very first line gives  us a hint of the ‘metaphysical’ sort of expression.The second lines also adds a similar word-game:the woman used to sigh(show sadness by taking a long breath) when the birds sighed.This is a striking way to say that she was very sympathetic.Then he adds a new type of description.He says that she used to move in many ways.It means that she was active and dynamic.He says that she looked like the various shapes that a bright container can contain.The metaphoric implication of this expression can be that she had a nice and well-made looking shape.After the fourth line,the speaker changes subject.He says that only god can fully describe her special qualities(virtues);he seems to give up his efforts at describing her he has made in the first four lines.He adds a second thought and says that he would allow at least the English poets who were trained to write the classical Greek poets of love and sex like Ovid.And finally,he adds that he would make the English poets to write songs in praise of her and sing them together in a chorus standing cheek to cheek!All these are unique ways to appreciate his beloved.

Stanza 2:In the second stanza,the speaker begins to make a second effort to describe his beloved;but here he emphasizes on his experiences and memories of her.He remembers that her wishes were many and quick to change.For instance,she sometimes stroked(rub gently) his chin.She taught him to turn and turn as a response(counter-turn) and to stand.She taught him to touch her wave-like white skin.This seems to suggest the curve of the body of a young woman’s naked body.He adds that he used to nibble(gently bite) her hand when she offered it to him.Changing subject,he says that he was a rake and she was a sickle.This implies that she was so beautiful and he was so ugly,for the sickle has a pretty curved shape and the rake has an ugly craggy shape.He adds a second thought in a bracket that he and his beloved used to make a lot of ‘mowing’.or cutting the grass.This is one hint that has rather vulgar sexual implication in this poem.The second stanza has some sexual hints and implications,like turning and counterturning,and nibbling the hand.The rake and sickle may also imply to the shape of a woman bending over a man.

Stanza 3:The speaker mentions the subject of love for the first time in the third stanza.He says that love likes the gander(male duck) and adores(praises) the goose(female duck).The goose and gander may be the poet’s private symbols of sexual energy and desire.He now tells us that the lips of the woman used to come together to make a sexual expression and she made naughty(errant) signals to graps him.He says that she played it quick and played light and loose.This is the most explicit statement of the sexual activity he used to be involved in with her.He remembers looking at her from top to bottom.He says that his eyes were dazzled to see her knees.He also remembers that her body parts were very harmoniously built.But he adds one metaphysical kind of description in this stanza also:he says that her hip or her nose used to move or quiver.He adds a second thought in a bracket again:he says that she moved in circled which also moved.This probably means that he found it difficult to follow her continuous movements.

Stanza 4:In the last stanza,the speaker stops describing the woman and describes his present state.He uses the past tense in the first three stanzas,but he uses the present tense in the last stanza.The first three stanzas were mainly in the descriptive-narrrative mode of expression,but the fourth is in the meditative mode.The man now evaluates his present situation.He says that he will not care for anything.”Let seed be grass,and grass turn into hay”.This suggests that he is probably a farmer who has to take care of his farm,his grass and hay.He will not care whether things get ruined or destroyed.He is mad in love of her.He says that he has become a martyr of her motions.He thinks that freedom is not for knowing eternity and after-life.It means that life and freedom is for enjoying it.He emphasizes that he has cast a shadow upon him,a shadow as white as stone.This could be a challenge against the whiteness of religion.Like the old man lover of Donne’s “canonization”,this old man lover also refuses to lead a spiritual way of life,for his lost love.He does not want to count such an enigmatic and long thing as eternity in the limited days of life.Life is too short to be given for the contemplation of eternity.He concludes that his ‘old bones’ will live to learn the ‘wanton’ behavior.The word ‘wanton’ has two kinds of meanings,one is ‘whimsical and careless’,and the other is ‘immoral and lustful’.For this old crazy lover,even time will be measured in terms of how a woman’s body moves.He has lost the sense of time and other meanings and purpose of living.This last stanza suddenly shows that the old man lover has realized that the woman was not reliable and serious.As the poem suggests,she seems to have exploited the poor old fellow and left him.The word ‘wanton’ is suggestive of the possibility that she was not serious with the old man.So the picture of the old lover becomes as interesting as the image of the woman.Living without the woman of his desire,this old man is only making odd poetic descriptions of a woman whom he says he only ‘knew’ and goes on adding a narrative of his activities with her which we doubt is not very reliable.The title itself is one of the clues to this hitch in the poem.As a romantic poem,the passionate love of the old man,the emotive descriptions,the use of a vivid imagery,and the sensuousness are all very typical and interesting.